A Time of Remembrance
By Bob Ulin, 22 April 2025
Half a century ago on April 30, 1975, Operation Frequent Wind was the final evacuation of “at risk” Vietnamese from Saigon, South Vietnam. I served two 15-month tours of duty in Vietnam during the war; November 1967 to February 1969 in the Central Highlands as an artillery battery commander and June 1970 to September 1971 as a Deputy District Senior Advisor (Infantry) in the Mekong Delta with the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). While in Vietnam I was engaged in seven of the thirteen military campaigns of the Vietnam War. All my time was spent in ground combat not sitting in some air-conditioned office in the rear areas. I had grown close to and had great respect for my South Vietnamese counterparts.
While in the Mekong Delta, I met and eventually sponsored Captain Pham Kim Dong, a Vietnamese artillery officer to attend the Field Artillery Advance Couse at Fort Sill, OK. After I left Vietnam in September 1971, I went to Fort Sill for my advance course and met Captain Dong who was attending his field artillery advance course.
After graduating from Fort Sill, I was posted to the 56th Field Artillery Brigade (Pershing) in Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany. On April 30, 1975, the day helicopters lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, I received a letter from Captain Dong, asking me to help evacuate his family from Saigon. I read his letter while watching the evacuation on television in the Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany Officer’s Club. My eyes filled with tears because his letter had been forwarded from Fort Sill to Germany and by the time I received his letter, it was impossible for me to doing anything on his behalf from half-way around the world.
On April 29, 1979 (four years after the fall of Saigon) I received a letter from Captain Dong’s daughter. She noted that her father was being held in a re-education camp in North Vietnam and that her husband, a former artillery First Lieutenant in the South Vietnamese Army, had escaped with her and their child from Vietnam by boat to Malaysia after he too had served three years in a re-education camp.
I wrote letters to the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and was referred to several non-governmental organizations that were facilitating evacuation out of Malaysia. In July 1979, I received a letter from the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A. in New York informing me that Captain Dong’s daughter and her family had been sponsored by a family in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. I wrote letters seeking to find the family but never received any responses.
Although it’s been fifty years ago, I still find that experience painful because I was unable to help a family in need or to honor my obligation to a fellow soldier. Every time I hear stories of U.S. Soldiers trying to evacuate their interpreters and other battle buddies from Afghanistan or Iraq, I know how they feel. There is a special bond between soldiers who have served together in combat. Especially those of us who have survived near death experiences.